


The Thousandth Man

by starbirdrampant (ineasako22)



Series: Tumblr writing prompts [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Stormtrooper revolution, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 08:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9376934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineasako22/pseuds/starbirdrampant
Summary: FN-2187 was not the first stormtrooper to leave the First Order.A response to a prompt byimaginarygoluxon tumblr."send me a made-up fic title and i’ll tell you what i would write to go with it" tumblr prompt





	

FN-2187 was not the first stormtrooper to leave the First Order. Nor was he the tenth, or even the hundredth. In fact, for the longest time, it was thought that he never really left at all. He died, the reports said, in a failed attempt at insurrection.

This is the cost of betraying the First Order, the bulletins said. This is the result of disobedience.

They never said anything about what happened to him afterwards.

~~~~~~~

GC-5283, “Knots,” crashed her TIE fighter after a routine reconnaissance mission ended in a Resistance skirmish that left her wing commander dead and five of her fellow pilots scattered like wreckage in the vacuum of space. 

Never let it be said that the Resistance has bad pilots.

Her self-destruct sequence was damaged – Executive Order 36: never allow yourself to be captured by the Enemy – so she aimed her TIE at the nearest planet and tried to let re-entry do the work for her. 

Except it didn’t work.

The first time she woke up, she was gasping in the thin atmosphere under a hot sun and she screamed when the melted edges of her armor plates caught on the singed underweave every trooper wore. The second time was when _they_ came for her, and her frantic scrabblings towards her blaster sent fire racing under her skin, sinking into her bones. The third time, she was in an infirmary – obviously not a First Order infirmary if the cave walls and humidity were anything to go by – and a man was sitting in a chair next to her bed, his head bowed to his chest in sleep, but with his hands resting casually on a blaster.

A med droid bustled over to her. “Patient, please remain still. You are in safe custody.”

It said nothing about the padded restraints on her wrists and ankles.

“Lieutenant Finn,” the droid was saying, tapping once on the man’s shoulder. “The patient is awake.”

The man came awake all at once, his dark eyes snapping first to the droid, then to where Knots lay quiet and still on the cot. Then he smiled. “Thanks D-8. I’ll take it from here.”

“I will inform General Organa,” the droid replied, and wheeled out of the door.

General Organa. That meant Resistance. Which meant she’d been captured. Which meant–

“Hey,” the man said, pulling his chair close. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

Safe? She was in Resistance custody. Of course she wasn’t _safe–_

“What’s your name?”

Protocol stated that under no circumstances was a trooper to give information to the enemy. If pressed, they were to relay their designation and where their unit was stationed, nothing more. 

“Pilot GC-5283,” she responded, staring determinedly at the ceiling. “Station: _Deliverance_.”

There was a beat of silence.

“I get that it’s protocol to not tell me anything, but I’m not going to ask you about the Order,” the man said. “I just want your name. Your real name. The one your squad gave you.”

No one had ever asked for her name. 

_This isn’t Protocol,_ she thought, fighting to keep her face still. It was so much harder without the helmet on. 

“Knots,” she said finally, and the name fell into the space between them like deficient ordinance, resting uneasily in the silence.

The man smiled. “I’m Finn.”

He said it like it was a gift, like they were two pilots who’d never met who got stationed at the same post together. 

He said it like he knew what it was like to keep a name hidden from the world.

“Who are you?” she asked, because there was something she couldn’t put her finger on. Some quality of emotion in his face that reminded her of the infantry troopers that would patrol the corridors of the _Deliverance_. (Except those troopers were always the same behind their white helmets, just as she was always the same behind her black pilot’s gear…)

“My designation was FN-2187,” the man – Finn – said. 

She knew that designation, every trooper did. For six standard months after the destruction of Starkiller Base by the terrorist Resistance, ‘FN-2187’ had been paraded around as the example, the traitor. And every trooper, pilot, and maintenance worker had stared straight ahead as the officers shouted about their anger and hatred that one of them had _dared_ to go against the First Order. Outwardly, they all agreed. FN-2187 was a traitor. But inwardly… inwardly they had quietly scratched his number into the insides of their helmets or under their chestplates; wherever it was that they put the names of the fallen.

Knots knew this designation well. It was right next to Stagger’s, to Rook’s; right next to the names of the four cadets who didn’t make it out of training with her. 

“You’re dead,” she told him. (She could see the people standing by the door stiffening at her words.) “You’re carved in armor,” she repeated. “You’re dead.”

The ma– _Finn_ – had an odd look on his face, even as his hand brushed the outside of his upper leg as though in a dream. 

“Finn?” asked a woman from the doorway, her fingers clutching a staff and her eyes glaring daggers at Knots.

“No, it’s alright,” Finn replied, waving the woman away, wonder still in his eyes. He turned back to Knots. “I go by Finn now.”

“You need to tell them,” Knots told him, though her eyes flicked over the room at large. “The officers are saying you died. If they knew…”

No one comes back from the Resistance, the rumors said. 

To betray the Order is to face execution, the officers said.

Nothing ever said what to do if the Order _lied_.

Finn’s eyes met hers, and she can see why the First Order tried so hard to keep FN-2187 in the ground. 

“Alright,” he said. “I can do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr is here.](http://starbirdrampant.tumblr.com) Come say hello!
> 
> If you would like to send in a prompt of your own, just let me know what it's for so I don't get a random ask out of the blue!


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